Gooey wild mushroom and spinach one-pot pasta dinner

Pinterest is a great way to lose a few hours, isn’t it? I find myself browsing pins for things I’m not even interested in, like bathroom decor and wedding decorations. Although to be fair, as you might expect, mostly I look at recipes. And food more generally. But mostly recipes.

Recently, I found myself browsing ‘one-pot’ pasta dishes. The general idea seems to be that you make a liquidy sauce, then chuck in the pasta (and possibly vegetables) and cook it in the sauce, in the same pot, hence ‘one-pot’. What could be easier?

On any given school night, easy is definitely the right adjective to describe our dinner, so I decided to give the one-pot method a go. But, since I’m new to the technique and wanted to maximise the chances of success, I used ptitim (Israeli giant couscous), as they cook quickly and in a known volume of liquid. I’m sure you could use orzo or any other small pasta shapes in this recipe for a very similar end result.

The sauce was gooey and creamy and extremely tasty, and the ptitim were just cooked without being mushy. Perfect! And as promised, the washing up was minimal!

I’ll certainly be trying this technique again, and now that I’ve got the basics, perhaps next time I’ll be brave enough to try with ‘big’ pasta shapes, or even spaghetti. I bet you could even finish this off in the oven to create a sort of baked-risotto/pasta-bake hybrid…

20 Comments:

I’ve not yet got the hang of Pinterest – perhaps that’s a good thing as I’d never have time to cook!

This recipe will be perfect for us on our caravan adventure. I’m all for one-pot cooking in such a small kitchen 😉 We’re in France at the moment and could buy mixed packs of ‘adventurous’ mushrooms to try so I’ll bookmark for next week’s shopping list. Thanks for sharing your recipe!

Thanks – spinach & mushrooms are great together aren’t they?! Yum. Ptitim are sometimes called giant couscous or Israeli couscous. They’re basically like orzo but in slightly different shapes. The ones I used here were little stars, but they come in circles, flowers, hearts, spheres…

I love this dish Helen, I am forever making meals out of spinach and mushrooms so great to have another one to try! Will have to get some of this pasta now! Thanks for linking up to #CreditCrunchMunch;-)

Goodness I think I must have lost at least 6 months browsing through Pinterest. I love one pot meals too – hey anything that cuts down on the washing up is a winner in my book! Love this recipe it looks so comforting and filling. Yum!